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Estimated time of infection vs. confirmed infections

Following the ideas from Tomas Pueyo's Medium post "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" [1], we assume the average time from infection to death at 23 days [2]. The data is pulled from the COVID-19 Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE [3] every hour. Countries with a minimnum of 1000 confirmed cases and 40 confirmed deaths are included in this analysis.

The time from infection to death is equal to the incubation period plus the time from symptoms to death. This is used to estimate the time of the infections that lead to the observed deaths. We take the last fatality rate per country (total_cases/total_deaths) to estimate the number of infections that are responsible for the observed deaths.

In the figures below, you can observe successive waves of infections (dashed), detections (black) and deaths (red) for each country. The upper panel shows the absolute number of events. The dashed lines show the estimated number of infections. The lower panel shows the normalized number of events. Here the temporal delay between the waves and the relative change between each other can be observed.

[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[2] https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus

[3] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
United Kingdom
Italy
France
Iran
Spain
Argentina
Peru
Colombia
Russia
South Africa
Indonesia
Belgium
Chile
Germany
Ecuador
Poland
Turkey
Iraq
Canada
Ukraine
Romania
Bolivia
Netherlands
Philippines
Pakistan
Czechia
Egypt
Sweden
Bangladesh
Saudi Arabia
Morocco
China
Guatemala
Switzerland
Portugal
Hungary
Panama
Honduras
Israel
Bulgaria
Tunisia
Dominican Republic
Algeria
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Austria
Moldova
Jordan
Ireland
Kazakhstan
Japan
Armenia
Burma
Afghanistan
Paraguay
Ethiopia
Costa Rica
Kyrgyzstan
North Macedonia
Oman
Greece
Kenya
Nepal
Croatia
Sudan
Nigeria
Serbia
Belarus
Libya
El Salvador
Azerbaijan
Slovenia
Australia
Kosovo
Lebanon
Venezuela
Kuwait
Georgia
Denmark
Albania
Uzbekistan
West Bank and Gaza
Slovakia
United Arab Emirates
South Korea
Cameroon
Montenegro
Finland
Zambia
Lithuania
Bahrain
Angola
Senegal
Malaysia
Ghana
Congo (Kinshasa)
Norway
Luxembourg
Madagascar
Qatar
Jamaica
Uganda
Latvia
Namibia
Cote d'Ivoire
Mozambique
Cabo Verde

Ahead of the curve

Some countries start testing the population earlier in the outbreak than others. The time delay between the wave of deaths and the wave of confirmed cases is indicative for how early a country is detecting new cases ahead of the increase of deaths. Earlier detection means a better chances for successful isolation of an infected person and treatment of the desease.

We measure the distance of the maximum of cumulative deaths and new deaths to the number of infections to estimate the progression of the infection across countries.

If, in the early phase of the infection wave, the number of deaths rises faster than the number of confirmed cases, the distance drops, indicating that

A comparison of countries with respect to their mean time for reponse is presented below.

To determine the above values, we plot the number of confirmed cases (solid black lines) and the number of deaths (dashed black lines). From this, we measure the distance of the day of maximum deaths (dashed red lines) to the day of confirmed cases at this y-value.

The distance is indicative for how fast the humber of confirmed cases increases comapred to the increase of the number of deaths.

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
United Kingdom
Italy
France
Iran
Spain
Argentina
Peru
Colombia
Russia
South Africa
Indonesia
Belgium
Chile
Germany
Ecuador
Poland
Turkey
Iraq
Canada
Ukraine
Romania
Bolivia
Netherlands
Philippines
Pakistan
Czechia
Egypt
Sweden
Bangladesh
Saudi Arabia
Morocco
China
Guatemala
Switzerland
Portugal
Hungary
Panama
Honduras
Israel
Bulgaria
Tunisia
Dominican Republic
Algeria
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Austria
Moldova
Jordan
Ireland
Kazakhstan
Japan
Armenia
Burma
Afghanistan
Paraguay
Ethiopia
Costa Rica
Kyrgyzstan
North Macedonia
Oman
Greece
Kenya
Nepal
Croatia
Sudan
Nigeria
Serbia
Belarus
Libya
El Salvador
Azerbaijan
Slovenia
Australia
Kosovo
Lebanon
Venezuela
Kuwait
Georgia
Denmark
Albania
Uzbekistan
West Bank and Gaza
Slovakia
United Arab Emirates
South Korea
Cameroon
Montenegro
Finland
Zambia
Lithuania
Bahrain
Angola
Senegal
Malaysia
Ghana
Congo (Kinshasa)
Norway
Luxembourg
Madagascar
Qatar
Jamaica
Uganda
Latvia
Namibia
Cote d'Ivoire
Mozambique
Cabo Verde